These tools include questions to help you think clearly about the situation of violence, what information to share with other people who are helping, and how to keep information up-to-date
Key Questions
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What is going on?
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What kind of harm, abuse or violence is happening?
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Who is being harmed?
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Who is causing the harm?
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What can be done?
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These tools consider risks, danger and safety plans. Violence of any form can cause harm. Taking action to respond to violence can cause new risks and dangers. This topic includes tools to figure out how to stay safe or reduce harm at each phase of the intervention.
Key Questions
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What are the risks and dangers now?
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Who is at risk?
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What is the level of risk? None, low, medium, high, emergency?
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What are the risks and dangers if you take no action?
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Who needs to be protected?
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How can you provide safety and protection?
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Who can help with safety? What safety networks are there?
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What are the next steps?
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This approach brings people together to overcome violence, even if it is only a couple of people. These tools guide you through who can help, what they can do to help, and how to bring them in to help. The tools help identify who might get in the way or make things worse, and who might help if they have some support.
Key Questions
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Who can help?
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Who might get in the way?
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Who is a good person to support the person harmed?
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Who is a good person to support the person causing harm?
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Who could be a better ally with some support?
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What kind of help do they need and who can give it?
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These tools help work out the outcomes your group wants. They separate goals that may be wishful or beyond your control, from those that are possible and in line with the group’s values.
Key Questions
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What do you want?
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What do you not want?
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What can you do to move towards your goals?
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Does the group share the same goals?
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What can you do as a group to move towards these goals?
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Are these goals realistic and within your control?
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How can you state these goals as concrete steps?
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These tools focus on supporting the health, safety and other needs and wants of the person who was harmed.
Key Questions
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What violence or abuse did the person who was harmed experience?
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What harms were caused?
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What do they think will help them?
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Who are the best people to give this support?
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How are they getting on-going support?
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These tools focus on supporting someone to recognise, stop and take responsibility for their violence. These questions are for the person causing harm. None of them should be turned back on the person harmed.
Key Questions
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What attitudes and behaviours led to the harms?
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Who directly caused the harms?
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Who allowed these harms to happen, even if they did not directly commit them?
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Who was harmed?
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What are the results of these harms, even if unintended?
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What and who does the person who caused harm care about?
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What people can influence and support their change?
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How can you use care and connection more than punishments and threats to promote change?
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What specific changes do you want?
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What are some specific ways to know that change has happened?
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How can you support long-lasting change?
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Working well together is an important and challenging part of an intervention. These tools can help with communicating, making decisions and sharing information.
Key Questions
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Who can work together?
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Does everyone know and agree with the goals?
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What are their roles?
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How will you communicate and co-ordinate?
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How will you make decisions?
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These tools check that the intervention is going well, that you have goals and are moving towards them. This topic includes tools for individuals to check that they are doing their best to achieve the goals.
Key Questions
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Are you ready to take the next step?
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How did it go?
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What did you achieve?
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Did you celebrate your achievements (even the small ones)?
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What needs to change?
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What is the next step?
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Topics to help
There are 8 topics with information and tools. The intervention doesn’t need to include all the topics, and you don’t need to be involved in everything that happens. This website contains a lot of information and resources—don’t be overwhelmed. Focus on what is most urgent and useful.
If the people you are working with have a specific goal, like getting someone who is hurting people to stop, or helping someone who has been hurt to work out what they want, find the topic about that goal. If you find there are gaps you need to fill in, like getting clear about what happened or finding others to help, you can go back to those topics as you need.
This list gives you an idea of where to find the information and tools you want on this website.
Facilitators
“It has taken several generations of learned behaviour and practice to entrench whānau violence as the most devastating and debilitating of social practices. It will take time for whānau violence to be unlearned.”
Second Māori Taskforce on Whānau Violence
“I want to help build Indigenous communities where all genders stand up, speak out and are committed to both believing and supporting survivors of violence and building our own Indigenous transformative systems of accountability.”
When you are first thinking about responding to or stopping violence, which can be at any time in the violent situation. It may have been a one-off or been going on for days, months or years. It may have happened long ago or recently, or it might still be happening.
Getting Started:
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Can be initiated by anyone—the person hurt, a friend, whanaunga, neighbour, co-worker or community member, or the person doing harm.
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Often involves topics like naming the violence, thinking about what you want, finding people and other resources to help, and thinking about who can get in the way.
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Getting started steps include:
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Looking for help on the internet and finding this website
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The person who is being harmed talking with you about what is happening and what they need
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Telling other people about the violence and asking for help
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Brainstorming on what to do about the violence
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Thinking about violence that happened long ago and deciding that something has to be done about it
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The person doing harm talking to you about their harm, or asking for help to stop.
You can get started at any time:
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A pattern of violence is becoming clear and you want to do something before it gets worse
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A pattern of violence is becoming dangerous, and something needs to be done
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You have found out about the violence and want to do something
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The police or child welfare have been called
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The people affected by violence are out of crisis and can think clearly about taking action
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You have found this website and realise you can do something
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Something happened, and you and others are doing something about it.
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When you’ve done the ground work and you’re getting ready to take action to respond to, stop or prevent violence.
Planning/preparation:
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Can involve bringing more people in to help
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Can involve setting goals, thinking about what help is needed and what you want from the person who has caused harm
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Planning/Preparation steps include:
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Figuring out who else can help
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Holding a meeting of people who might be able to help
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Thinking about risks and dangers as the intervention starts, and figuring out a safety plan
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Making a schedule of people who can stay with the person who was hurt for support and safety
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Thinking about who needs to know about the violence so children are protected at school, friend’s homes or in care
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Preparing an ‘accountability plan’ for the person doing harm, including what harm they have done, people who can support change, the groups requests of them, and consequences if requests are not met.
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When you take action to respond to, stop or prevent violence.
Taking Action:
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Is a deliberate step or set of steps
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Can be carried about by anyone—the person hurt; a friend, whanaunga, neighbour, co-worker or community member; or the person doing harm
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Can include supporting people who have been hurt, dealing with people doing harm, bringing people together for support, growing the understanding and responses of friends, whānau or community members
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Includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Taking Action steps include:
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Staying with the person hurt at their home for support and safety, or them staying with someone else if their home isn’t safe
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Contacting the person doing harm for a meeting
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Meeting with the person doing harm
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The person doing harm taking steps to be responsible for the harms they have caused
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Holding a community meeting about the violence and your group’s steps to respond to it
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Going to a child's school to talk about what is happening, and asking the school to provide safety for the child
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Going to the whānau of the person who was hurt to talk about the violence and how they can be a better ally to their child.
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To make sure action steps are working towards the values and goals of the intervention; to check if changes are needed; to tell whether new events or changes have come into the picture; to tell how close the intervention is to its goal; to tell whether the intervention needs to be paused, sped up, changed or brought to a close.
Following-Up:
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Is a deliberate process after each action step, at particular phases of the intervention, or at the end of an intervention
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Can involve everyone in the intervention or a smaller group of people
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Is an important part of keeping on track
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Can involve making plans to respond if violence happens again
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Can involve a process for checking in to see how things are going after an intervention ends
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Should happen even if action steps are never taken or things don't go as planned
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includes thinking about risks and ways to increase safety.
Following up steps include:
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Checking in with people who were going to take an action to see what happened
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Checking that the actions and results of actions met your values, goals and safety needs
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Checking that the actions and results of an entire intervention process met your values, goals and safety needs.
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Have you been asked to take on the role of facilitator for a group responding to violence? Whether for one meeting or a bunch of meetings?
This website contains a collection of resources and information to help people responding to violence. It works best with someone acting as a facilitator. You may be a friend, whanaunga or community member, or you may be a helpful professional willing to work with the values and approach behind this model.
This website has a unique approach to dealing with violence, which may be unfamiliar to you, even if you work in anti-violence.
If you have been asked to support a group using this website, this section has notes to help. It is best read along with the much larger section for community allies. Throughout this section, there are links that will take you to the information for allies.
What is the role of the facilitator?
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An anchor for people who are involved in what can be confusing, changing and emotionally difficult situations of violence and violence intervention
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A guide to the resources, including basic information, stories and tools found on this website
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A sounding board—someone who can ask the kind of questions that help people figure out their own answers and steps forward (there are tools to help with this)
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A group co-ordinator—someone who can help the group communicate together, share information, make decisions and move to the next steps (there are tools to help with this)
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A group leader—someone who can help everyone move towards a common set of goals.
Who can be a good facilitator?
This model works best with a facilitator. A group can have more than one facilitator, or can share the role among the group. The facilitator doesn’t need to be an expert or professional. A good facilitator:
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Is trusted
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Is a good communicator
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Is connected to the people involved in the situation of violence
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Is not intensely involved in the situation of violence
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Is good at working with groups
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Is willing to use this website and help others with it
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Has values that can support a community-based intervention
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Has time and energy for this process.
Introducing the model
Interpersonal violence is complicated. Many of us don’t really understand it or what to do about it. The first place to start is reading the Basics about violence section, the Basics about violence intervention section and the FAQ section.
You might only need one or two topics or tools, or you might work through them all. Use these tools and the information in this website however works best for you.
There are many tools and a lot of information on this website. This is an overview of the approach to help you find what you are looking for.
The focus of an intervention often changes over time. Creative Interventions saw four main phases and 8 topics within them.
Phases of an intervention
Notes for facilitators
If you are a facilitator or willing to help people work through the tools and information on this website, these notes are to help you.
If you have been asked to facilitate the whole process, you may want to read all of the allies section and the notes for facilitators. If you have been asked to facilitate a meeting or part of the process, you may want to skip straight to that part.
This approach works best with a facilitator, who may be a friend, whanaunga or community member, or a helpful professional willing to work with the values and approach behind this model.
This website contains a unique approach to dealing with violence, which may be unfamiliar to you, even if you work in anti-violence. If you have been asked to support people working through this website as a facilitator, these notes are to help you.
1. Encourage and support people to learn basic information first if they have not already
This website is long and can be overwhelming. Important parts that everyone should understand are in the Basics section. Basics about violence talks about how violence works and common misunderstandings that people have.
Encourage everyone involved to read those sections, or read them together. Reading may not work for everyone, so think as a group how to share the information in those sections.
2. Support people by going through information and tools that seem useful
When people are in crisis it can help to break this topic into manageable parts. People may be able to glance through the whole topic, but then begin by working through the What is going on Quick Question Guide or What is going on Worksheet. You can help by knowing what is in this topic (and the website) and guiding people to bite-size next steps.
3. Support a collective or group process
We encourage people to join with people they trust to do this work. You may be collecting information for What is going on with a couple of people or even a small group. This may be done as a group if it makes sense, or by going to people individually and gathering information.
Bringing people together may introduce new risks or dangers. You may want to read How do you stay safe and Who can help before expanding the group.
It can help to organise this information visually on something everybody can see, for example
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Whiteboard or chalkboard
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Newsprint
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Post-its or cut-outs you can put on the wall
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Objects you can move on a table or on the floor.
4. Find useful and safe ways to record this information so it doesn’t get lost
Keep information and decisions from your meetings in some permanent way so you can refer to them later, compare them with changes over time, and share them with people who were not at the meeting.
Ways to document include:
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Write notes
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Draw pictures
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Take pictures of notes, post-its, objects
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Roll-up and re-use newsprint notes.
Make sure these documents are kept safe. Make sure the people most affected by violence are part of deciding how to do this. It may mean that even if you usually share everything that happens with your partner or someone else, you cannot do it in this case.
Remember that emails can easily be forwarded. Written notes can be found and read by other people who may endanger the people involved, even if they don’t mean to. Think about how gossip could harm a situation and try to make judgments about who is safe to share information with and how to make stronger agreements to keep information safe.
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Facilitators can help to make sure a group is thinking about overall risks and safety planning, as well as checking that safety plans are made as things change and people take new actions.
If you have been asked to support people working through this website as a facilitator, these notes are to help you.
1. Encourage and support people to learn basic information first if they have not already
This website is long and can be overwhelming. Important parts that everyone should understand are in the Basics section. Basics about violence talks about how violence works and common misunderstandings that people have.
Encourage everyone involved to read those sections, or read them together. Reading may not work for everyone, so think as a group how to share the information in those sections.
2. Make sure that people take the time to think seriously about risks and safety planning
Safety is a main concern when taking action to respond to, end or prevent violence. People often underestimate risk. Think through the many things that could go wrong and come up with some safeguards just in case.
3. Bring people together to form a safety plan
Safety is easiest in groups. Avoid having anyone act by themselves. Even if someone will take an action alone, have a back-up or buddy system—someone who knows what they are going to do, when, and can stay in contact with them.
4. Make sure risk assessment and safety planning are a regular part of your intervention
Risks and therefore safety plans will change as the situation changes and actions are taken. Make regular safety planning a way for everyone to lower risk.
People are rarely totally on board or totally in the way. Help the group think creatively and move away from black and white thinking. When we think of people as totally on board, we can miss ways that they are not the best fit for some roles. When we think of people as totally in the way, we can miss ways that they are suited to a specific task. It is possible for participants in an intervention to be allies to one goal and barriers to another.
1. Encourage and support people to learn basic information first if they have not already
This website is long and can be overwhelming. Important parts that everyone should understand are in the Basics section. Basics about violence talks about how violence works and common misunderstandings that people have.
Encourage everyone involved to read those sections, or read them together. Reading may not work for everyone, so think as a group how to share the information in those sections.
2. Support people to go through information and tools that seem useful
You may be helping people work out who can help and who might get in the way. You may need to do this again, several times. Look out for ways that allies and barriers change over time. Pay special attention to the following patterns:
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Some people may feel so angry, disgusted or impatient with the person doing harm that they can’t put those feelings aside. They may have difficulty working to the goals of the intervention, or belittle all positive steps made by the person doing harm. These are common and understandable responses, but they aren’t always helpful. Those people may need to find different roles or step back for a while.
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Look out for people who are supporting the person doing harm if they: 1) protect that person from the intervention; 2) sabotage the intervention; 3) argue that the person harmed is equally responsible for the harm and needs to be held equally accountable; or 4) influence people to believe that the person harmed is ‘crazy’ or ‘fragile’, and either brought harm on themselves or made it up. You may be able to bring them round, but they are unlikely to help the intervention, and you will need others to work with the person causing harm.
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Look out for people who are too affected by the situation to help, who can’t separate their experiences from what is happening in this intervention. The self-reflection tools in How are you doing can help.
3. Be careful if you are bringing together people supporting the person harmed with people supporting the person who hurt them
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Help people focus on the goals of the intervention and stopping violence. Steer people away from arguing about whose version of the story is true, or what dynamics in the situation or relationship were messed up.
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Remind the group that they aren’t there to judge every aspect of the relationship. None of you know the full story. You are trying to stop violence, not agree on why the violence happened, or to design a therapy plan for everyone involved.
4. Make sure new allies are given the necessary information—use the Harms Chart or Harms Statement from What is going on
As new allies get involved, look for ways to catch them up without spending most of the meeting rehashing what has happened. Hopefully you have been recording what has been happening, use those documents to bring people up to speed.
Use the Harms Chart or Harms Statement from What is going on to work out what information needs to be shared with new members. Think about how to share this information separately if it will take too much time in a group meeting, or use it as an opportunity to remind the group of the situation that brought them together. This can help morale and sustainability.
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Helping the group work out their goals is important, and it can be hard. Your job isn’t to make everyone agree, but to guide the group through a process which makes agreement possible and allows honest discussion of disagreements. Below are some tips for facilitating group discussion in goal-setting.
1. Understand the importance of the goals of the person who has been harmed
The person harmed and their goals are important. This is true whether they are leading the intervention, or less involved. If your process is led by the person harmed, or they are actively involved, you may want to share their goals first in a way that helps everyone to understand and remember them.
2. Help people separate fantasy goals from reality
Fantasy goals are normal, including fantasies of revenge or a quick and perfect ending. But you want to end up with goals that are realistic and do not cause greater harm. See Dealing with strong negative feelings and fantasy during goal setting for help.
3. Consider a process where everyone can share their individual goals as a step towards reaching group goals
People can think about their goals and how they go along with, add to or conflict with group goals. An example of a process is:
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Each person shares their goals
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Write goals where everyone can see them using people’s own words
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Help the group figure out which goals are overlapping (you can mark them with a tick)
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Help the group work out which are individual, but not necessarily collective goals
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Help work out which are non-negotiable, bottom-line goals
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Help the group work out which individual goals and bottom-lines can be maintained without getting in the way of the group goals (you can mark with plus)
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Help the group work out if conflicting individual goals and bottom-lines) can be can be let go of to keep a set of goals that everyone can agree to (you can mark with question mark). For example, someone might not be involved in a part of the intervention; or someone might realise after some discussion that their bottom-line wasn’t as important to them as they first thought
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Help the group to work outcollective group goals
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Double check to see if everyone can agree to the goals. See if there are remaining question marks and whether these can be crossed off or reworded into pluses or ticks
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Record your group goals and bottom-lines, record any questions or concerns to return to later.
4. Give people time to think about individual goals to help with agreeing on group goals
Group goals may come from bringing together individual goals that people developed on their own. Have time outside the meeting or individual time in the meeting where people can think about and write out their individual goals.
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If you are a facilitator or are helping someone to work through this website, you can have an important role in supporting people who have been harmed.
1. Encourage and support people to learn basic information first if they have not already
This website is long and can be overwhelming. Important parts that everyone should understand are in the Basics section. Basics about violence talks about how violence works and common misunderstandings that people have.
Encourage everyone involved to read those sections, or read them together. Reading may not work for everyone, so think as a group how to share the information in those sections.
2. Make sure to return to the person harmed as an anchor to the intervention
If the person harmed is connected to the intervention, then you can make sure that people are thinking about what they think, need and want, and their safety. This may mean checking in with them regularly during discussions to make sure the process is working for them.
If the person harmed is not in the room, you can support them by reminding the group that someone needs to connect with them. Make sure that at least one person has this role, checking that their needs are being met, they are staying safe, their fears or concerns are being addressed and letting them know how the intervention is going.
3. Make sure that safety of the person harmed is addressed
The person harmed may be in a dangerous and vulnerable position. Actions taken by the group may lead to more violence against them.
The possibility of retaliation might not stop you from going ahead, but the risks need to be thought about. Safety plans need to be made so that the person harmed (and others in the intervention) aren’t further harmed because of the intervention. Think about other vulnerable people too, like children, whānau, friends, pets or anyone involved in the intervention.
For the facilitator, the process of supporting the person causing harm to take accountability can be particularly challenging. It can be long and consuming. It can become the focus of everyone’s attention and energy, maybe leaving the person harmed isolated without support. The person doing harm is likely to resist, making the process of accountability confusing and frustrating.
Your role may be keeping things on track and making sure that people are working to the same goals.
1. Read How can you support the person causing harm to take accountability carefully, and offer information or tools that might help the process
Taking accountability is hard. People most involved in supporting accountability (including allies, the person harmed and the person doing harm) can get confused and frustrated. You may be in a good position to see when information or tools on this website could help.
2. Keep an eye on safety
Taking accountability can be scary for the person doing harm. They might not want to admit to anything or to change their behaviour. Even when they seem to be co-operating, they may also be threatening the person harmed, intimidating allies and undermining the accountability process.
See How do you stay safe for more tools that people can use to increase safety.
3. Remind people of the goals and values and make sure these guide the process
The process of taking accountability can take many twists and turns. You can’t control the progress of the person doing harm towards accountability. Things can change dramatically along the way, and it can help to check in with your goals. See What do you want for more information.
Remind people of the goals and values that guide the intervention. If the goals or values no longer help or fit, help the group think about what goals and values make sense to them now.
4. Make sure that support is at the centre
The process of taking accountability can be hard and exhausting. You will need a supportive environment for everyone if you are going to last long enough to make it to stick.
Encourage people to find support through their own relationships and each other. Help create a positive environment where people feel appreciated (see How do you work together as a team for help with this). Make sure the person harmed doesn’t get forgotten as the group puts energy into the process of accountability.
5. Keep the process holistic
Try to keep the parts of the intervention connected, even when it seems easier to drop parts or break into separate groups. The process of taking accountability can become the focus of the whole intervention. It might split off from the process of providing support for person harmed, so that people working on one part of the intervention are separate from those working on another. You might forget about the needs of the person harmed, or leave them out of the process of accountability. The group might put all their attention on the person doing harm and forget to pay attention to the community context.
As the facilitator, you may be able to see the bigger picture and make sure that people are communicating with and connected to each other. Think about whether any parts of the intervention are being forgotten and make sure that these pieces are picked up.
If you are the facilitator, you have a central role in guiding the group to work together well.
1. Encourage and support people to learn basic information first if they have not already
This website is long and can be overwhelming. Important parts that everyone should understand are in the Basics section. Basics about violence talks about how violence works and common misunderstandings that people have.
Encourage everyone involved to read those sections, or read them together. Reading may not work for everyone, so think as a group how to share the information in those sections.
2. Figure out your role as facilitator
The main jobs of the facilitator are to help people use the tools on this website, and to make sure that everyone is getting the right information, is checking in with each other, and is working together in a co-ordinated way.
You might also have other roles. You might have started the intervention, you might lead it, take and keep notes, or be someone’s main supporter. If there are only a couple of you working on this intervention, you may need to take on many roles.
If you have a big enough team to cover those roles, then you can focus on returning people to tools in this website as needed, noticing what isn’t getting done and making sure that people work together to fill those gaps.
If there aren’t enough people, and it is too overwhelming, you may be able to pause the process and figure out who else can help (see Who can help for information and tools).
3. Make sure that people can speak openly
As the facilitator, you can support people to share their opinions. Some people may not feel confident to speak up. Others may have unpopular opinions that are ignored by the group. Work to make a group where everyone can share what they think and be heard, even if it is unpopular. Use the tools in this topic to move towards agreement—even if people agree to disagree, it is better to know what everyone thinks.
4. Support people to use the tools in How do you work together
You will be part of figuring out the main jobs that people have, the decision-making processes that make the most sense for the group, and the communication process.
People in your group may not have worked in a co-ordinated way before. They may have a hard time understanding some of these group processes.
Notice who is having a hard time and support them to learn and practise. If someone can’t become a team person with support, then you and the team may have to find a way to ask them to take on a different role, or even to step off the team.
The tools in this topic can help facilitators keep the process moving. You can use these tools at any stage of the intervention.
1. Keep the goals in mind and use the tools in How are you doing to move towards them
If an intervention goes for a long time, you might lose track of what you are working towards. These tools help to move on to the next step and stay on track.
2. Keep these tools on hand at every meeting and every step
These tools can help figure out the next steps after a meeting, after an action or just along the way. They can be used for an individual or the group. Think about how to use the questions to move you along as you facilitate a meeting, and remind everyone about these tools to help them stay on track.
3. Remember to celebrate your achievements
Responding to interpersonal violence is hard work. There will be times when you are confused, disappointed and wonder if anything will move forward. These tools help to figure out how you are doing and how to move to the next step.
An important step will be to notice the small successes—the steps forward, things somebody did well or that led to something good. Celebrating small and big steps along the way is important.
It is possible that there will only be small achievements, that you will not get to your bigger goals. We have come to see each step and each gain as important. We urge you to do the same.